Text 14801, 126 rader
Skriven 2007-05-21 20:08:59 av Josh Hill (1214.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 14783 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (1196.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: unions
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On Mon, 21 May 2007 09:27:13 -0700, Charlie Edmondson
<edmondson@ieee.org> wrote:

>Josh Hill wrote:

>> What would we have done with a more permanent infrastructure? Asking
>> that at this point is I think a bit like asking why Columbus didn't
>> establish a permanent settlement as soon as he landed in the New
>> World. There was just no economic, military, or propaganda
>> justification, and as for the scientific one, Richard Nixon was happy
>> to put his signature on a plaque and end the program prematurely.
>> 
>> Which isn't to say that the manned space program (as opposed to the
>> unmanned program, which has done marvelous things that don't always
>> receive the credit they should) didn't fall into a bureaucratic heap
>> when the government, which had chosen to go to the moon because it
>> feared competition from the Russians and no longer had that
>> imperative, lost interest and refused to fund ambitious programs such
>> as Von Braun's proposed expansion of Apollo to Mars.
>> 
>> But that's pretty much my point. Under Kennedy, and faced with the
>> propaganda advantages of the Russian space program, the government had
>> a reason to go to the moon; after that, the government was no longer
>> interested, and the manned program faltered. So when there's vision
>> and a perceived need, government can do extraordinary things. When
>> there's no vision or no perception of need, nothing happens. A
>> president with vision would address global warming and the energy
>> crisis; a president without, or rather, a president who has absorbed
>> in an unquestioning way the right wing belief in the inherent badness
>> of government and so won't even try to use it, won't. The sad thing is
>> that Bush isn't even a warming denier, and he's demonstrated in his
>> speeches an awareness of the technologies that will solve the problem.
>> He just believes, erroneously, that private enterprise will fix
>> everything without economic or regulatory incentives to do so.
>> 
>Well, with a permanent infrastructure (that would have included a manned 
>space station...) we would have been able to have used cheaper and more 
>communications satellites earlier.  We also could have established a 
>permanent presence on the moon, and had a staging area for Mars, which 
>we would undoubtably have reached by 1990.  But we didn't.  We got a one 
>shot PR compaign.

There was no demand for those things. They would have been fabulously
expensive.

>And that is also my point with these government initiatives that so many 
>people seem to favor.  They take a worthwhile goal, like getting us off 
>oil, or curing cancer, and then take billions of tax dollars, and 
>produce 'a result' that is preferably photogenic, certainly spectacular, 
>but very, very rarely what anyone in their right mind would have called 
>the original goal.

The goal of Apollo was to beat the Russians to the moon: success. The
goal of the first world war, the second world war, Korea, and the cold
war were to beat the enemy: success. Also in the 20th century, the
government was wonderfully successful at any number of projects,
including -- this is a very incomplete list -- 

Improving the safety and efficacy of foods and medications
Eliminating child labor, slashing the risk of industrial accidents,
reducing brutal working hours and conditions
Cleaning the water and air
Providing a basic retirement income for the elderly, and slashing the
poverty rate
Slashing the poverty rate in general
Building a vast system of flood control networks and dams
Building an interstate highway system and airports
Slashing the death rate from cancer (no one knows how to "cure" it)
Slashing the death rate from AIDS (again, no one knows how to cure it)
Slashing our energy consumption below what it would otherwise have
been

That last requires a bit of explanation. You point out, rightly, that
the government didn't end our dependence on foreign oil. But you
ignore the fact that that was in large measure because the
anti-government, pro-business right, along with corrupt energy-funded
politicians of every stripe blocked steps that would have moved us in
the right direction. I think you'll admit that it's fairly silly to
block government on the grounds that it's ineffectual and then say
"See? Government is ineffectual." Yet that's what the anti-government
right does all the time.

>So, some predictions for what government could do if they got involved 
>in the energy crisis business?  Sponsor Halliburton to build a massive 
>hydrogen infrastructure across the US, including retrofitting pipelines, 
>filling stations and massive electrolysis stations.  It would cost us 
>billions, would feather the pork nests of 100s of congresscritters, and 
>would leave us unable to move once we found out how much the cars and 
>fuel would actually cost.
>
>Or, they could sponsor a national Billion Solar Roofs project, with tax 
>subsidies and grants to put in expensive solar panels across the US. 
>Then, five years down the line, when most of the panels have broken, or 
>caused fires because of improper maintanance, or just didn't work 
>because the contractors were ripping off the consumers, we would scrap 
>the whole thing, but again, the congresscritters would be happy thanks 
>to the huge pork input to their districts...

Actually, government has already supported much or most of the basic
research that /does/ allow us to solve the energy crisis, from the
development of fission plants to work on hydrogen fuel cells.

Here's what government will do if it has any sense:

- Finance basic research and demonstration plants in the most
promising technologies
- Establish a cap and trade system for carbon emissions using as a
basis the best scientific estimates of what we have to do and let free
enterprise do what it does best, compete to develop and implement
solutions
- Where economic incentives aren't sufficiently speedy, use regulation

That's the gist of it. The actual effort will in fact be much more
complex, but this is the core, and it's enough.

-- 
Josh

"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet
that people have the right to live life as they please,
as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. . . .
The radical right has nearly ruined our party. Its members
do not care about the Constitution and they are the
ones making all the noise." - Barry Goldwater
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
 * Origin: Time Warp of the Future BBS - Home of League 10 (1:14/400)